OVERVIEW: JPMorgan Chase supports local, regional and national organizations working to improve the economic health of local communities.
IP TAKE: This corporate funder has a broad range of grantmaking interests, but getting its attention may prove difficult. It’s not accessible or particularly approachable. Geographic restrictions apply on a state-by-state basis. It also doesn’t like to take grantmaking risks.
Despite it’s $2.5 trillion pledge to address sustainability and climate change, this funder continues investments in fossil fuels, the largest of its kind in the banking sector. It has been accused by several environmental watchdogs for greenwashing it’s climate change commitments.
PROFILE: The massive financial services firm JPMorgan Chase does its grantmaking through its Impact and Corporate Responsibility arm, which seeks to invest in its “customers, employees and communities around the world to break down barriers to opportunity and create an economy that works for more people.” The firm has given away hundreds of millions of dollars to nonprofits worldwide in recent years, with a five-pronged focus on Community Development, Careers and Skills, Business Growth and Entrepreneurship, Financial Health and Wealth Creation and Environmental Sustainability.
Grants for Housing and Community Development
JPMorgan Chase’s Community Development program area primarily consists of Partnerships for Raising Opportunity in Neighborhoods, a five-year initiative dedicated to promoting “locally driven solutions for revitalizing distressed neighborhoods across the United States.” Its main priorities are “catalyzing collaboration among community development financial institutions,” “providing seed capital for affordable housing,” and “investing in data to help communities understand the most urgent problems and develop specific solutions.” Its Advancing Cities initiative is “a $500 million, five-year initiative to invest in solutions that bolster the long-term vitality of the world’s cities and the communities within them that have not benefited from economic growth.” Currently the cities receiving funding include Paris, Chicago, Detroit and the Greater Washington Region.
Past grantees include Opportunity CLE Neighborhoods in Cleveland, OH to “provide flexible loans and real estate development technical assistance in the target neighborhoods to attract private capital,” the 614 for Linden in Columbus, OH “to advance the One Linden Plan by developing affordable housing, providing capital to small businesses, creating jobs and nurturing healthier children and families,” and LIFT in Washington, DC, to “provide financial coaching to individuals who live below the poverty line.”
Grants for Higher Education and Economic Development
While JPMorgan Chase does not maintain a designated higher education program, but conducts related grantmaking through its Jobs and Skills program. In doing so, the foundation conducts grantmaking for both through an economic mobility lens. Stemming from the conviction that “addressing the skills gap can be one of the most powerful tools for reducing unemployment and expanding economic opportunity,” JPMorgan Chase established a “$250 million, five-year initiative” that seeks to “inform and accelerate efforts to develop demand-driven skills training so that workers and industries have the skills to compete and prosper in a global economy.” Of that commitment, Chase allocated $75 million to a sub-program, New Skills for Youth, which aims “to expand high-quality, career-focused education programs that lead to well-paying jobs and long-term careers” for young people.
The foundation also funds higher education through its small business expansion program, a five-year, $30-million initiative launched in 2014 that “supports small businesses by connecting them to critical resources to help them grow faster, create jobs and strengthen local economies.” In a past year, JPMorgan Chase gave a substantial grant to the California Institute for Quantitative Biosciences (QB3) at UC San Francisco to “promote biotech innovation in San Francisco” by enabling it to hire an entrepreneurship program manager and to “fund internships at the center to assist students from economically disadvantaged neighborhoods in their efforts to enter the biotech industry.”
At the secondary level, JPMorgan also has a fellowship initiative that provides academic support, college counseling and mentoring young men of color.
Grants for Diseases
Although the JPMorgan Chase Foundation does not have a grantmaking program dedicated to diseases, its tax filings show an interest in this area. For example, past grantees include organizations such as Breast Cancer Prevention Partners and the Huntington’s Disease Society of America.
Grants for Climate Change and Clean Energy
This funder names sustainability as an area of grantmaking interest, although some of its parent company’s business practices are antithetical to this particular philanthropic aim. This is a new focus area for J.P. Morgan Chase, and as yet there is no evidence of grantmaking in this area. According to the grantmaker’s website, funding will “help address climate change and promote long-term, innovative solutions for a more sustainable future.”
Important Grant Details:
Grant amounts generally range from $1,000 to $1.75 million, with most grants staying under the $100,000 mark. The foundation limits its grantmaking to geographic regions of the world in which it has a business and employee presence, which are listed here. The JPMorgan Chase Foundation does not accept or review unsolicited letters of inquiry or grant proposals.
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